Case Number 05130

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME

The Charge

"Your whole life's been a dream, and it's only now you're waking
up."

Opening Statement

My Life Without Me has most of the ingredients of a great film --
wonderful acting, appealing direction, and an interesting and worthy story.
Unfortunately, the script doesn't have the emotional truth needed to hold it
together.

Facts of the Case

Ann (Sarah Polley, The Sweet Hereafter) is a 23-year old wife and
mother who works nights as a janitor and comes home to a trailer in her
perpetually disgruntled mother's back yard. She had her first child at age 17,
and is married to the only man she's ever kissed.

The day her chronically unemployed husband Don (Scott Speedman,
Felicity) finds a job and begins to dream of a better life, Ann discovers
she has terminal cancer and begins to dream of a different life. She chooses to
tell no one her diagnosis, refuses a second opinion or treatment, and in a diner
scrawls a list: 10 Things to Do Before I Die.

The items range from the sweetly obvious ("tell my daughters I love
them every day") to the understandably self-serving ("sleep with
another man, just to see what it's like") to the staggeringly selfish
("make someone fall in love with me").

The someone in question is Lee (Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me),
who lives in an empty house, hopelessly waiting for the woman who broke his
heart -- and took his furniture -- to return. He is drawn to Ann when they meet
in a Laundromat, and they predictably become lovers.

She even leaves her children with a stranger (also named Ann) who just moved
in next door in order to be with Lee, and then plots to have that neighbor marry
Don after her death. That would be another item on her list -- "find Don a
new wife."

The Evidence

My Life Without Me is based on a short story by Nancy Kincaid, but
writer/director Isabel Coixet made the crucial change of having Ann keep her
cancer a secret. And it's precisely that change that is critical to the success
or failure of the film. It only works if the viewer can believe that Ann's
decision is somehow courageous. I can't.

She doesn't want her daughters to remember her in a hospital, which works as
a partial explanation if you accept that this headstrong woman could not refuse
treatment if she told her weak-willed husband and mother the secret. Instead,
she tells everyone she's suffering from anemia. "I need to feel like I have
some kind of control," Ann tells her shy doctor.

She doesn't want her daughters to remember her lingering death. Fine. But I
need some rationale for why she doesn't want to spend as much time as possible
with them before she dies. Or why she denied them, particularly her husband, the
chance to say goodbye when it was obvious the end was very near. She takes
control not just by planning her life without her, but also by withholding the
one thing her family and friends would most want from her.

Every relationship Ann has is tainted by her deception. In her scenes with
the fragile Lee and with her vapid but loving husband, the audience knows she is
setting both of them up for heartbreak and confusion. The only truthful
relationship she has is with the doctor, who can't look her in the eye when he
tells her she's dying, and ends up being more entangled in her life than he
would have believed -- in fact, far more than I can believe.

There are many examples of where the emotion of the script almost but
doesn't quite work. One of Ann's resolutions is to record a birthday message for
each of her daughters until they are 18. In theory, this is a touching idea, and
it does make for a touching scene, but in practice, I can't help but feel she's
guaranteeing them a lifetime of birthday blues. Luckily the good doctor agrees
to distribute them every year on each of the girls' birthdays. I'm still looking
for a doctor who will remember my birthday.

At one point, Neighbor-and-Prospective-Wife Ann tells a story about
conjoined twins, one a girl, the other a boy. In the real world, they would
necessarily be the same gender. So is her story supposed to be genuine but is
sabotaged by an error in the script? Or is she lying? That question echoes a
problem with the script in general -- a highly emotional scene didn't affect me
because of doubts about the character's motivation.

Some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy, particularly some of the romantic
moments between Ann and Lee ("I'm in love with you." "Careful, it
sounds like a classic case of falling in love." Huh?). A scene with an
uncredited Alfred Molino as Ann's imprisoned father, whom she hasn't seen in 10
years, is awkward like badly written lines, not like familial estrangement.

The ending is far too pat and unbelievable. Either we're meant to take it
literally, or it represents Ann's wish fulfillment fantasy, but either way,
Coixet might as well have ended it with: "...and they all lived happily ever
after...except for Ann."

The terrific cast is fully committed to their roles despite the weaknesses
of the script. Polley is brilliantly understated, with a natural presence and
lack of sentimentality that saves the movie from being maudlin. The male
characters are so underwritten that it takes heroic but ultimately doomed
efforts by the actors to inject any credibility into them. While Ruffalo is
magnetic, as always, and Speedman conveys goofy charm, it's not enough to make
the characters anything but convenient pawns in Ann's game. As the idealized
lover and husband, they are given little to do but adore Ann.

The supporting actors are equally fine. Deborah Harry (Cop Land)
plays Ann's mother with loud despair. The comic relief comes from Amanda Plummer
as Ann's thin but diet-obsessed coworker and Maria de Medeiros as a quirky
hairdresser with a few too many quirks, including obsessions with Milli Vanilli
and braids.

Director Coixet (Things I Never Told You) also operated the camera
and creates a deliberately choppy look to the film, with abrupt transitions
between scenes as well as shaky handheld shots. Some moments are pure magic,
such as the surreal supermarket dance sequence and a nice scene showing Ann and
her daughters "pretending the bed is a raft" (which, incidentally, is
the name of Kincaid's original short story).

My Life Without Me boasts a basic but solid sound design in Dolby
Digital 5.1 and a very sharp DVD transfer with no noticeable flaws. In fact, the
transfer of this independent production, unmarred by edge enhancement, far
surpasses many higher-budget, higher-grossing DVD releases. The soundtrack is
unfortunately not available on CD, but the movie's somber mood is enhanced with
gems from Blossom Dearie, Omara Portuondo and Gino Paoli, among others.

A selection of trailers and a Making Of Featurette are the lone extras. If
you loved the movie, you might enjoy the behind-the-scenes glimpses captured in
the 30-minute featurette. Otherwise, it might bore you to tears. Scenes from the
movie act as padding between interviews with the director, producer Esther
Garcia -- who also has a bit part as Ann's manicurist -- and much of the cast.
There are some genuinely interesting moments when things go wrong with the
shoot, but mostly we learn, of course, that everyone was fabulous to work with
and that everyone involved believes the movie is inspiring and important.

Closing Statement

The cast outshines the script in this disappointing, but not irredeemable,
movie. A so-so indie with aspirations of grandeur, it's worth a rental on a
rainy evening.

The Verdict

Isabel Coixet is put on probation for an uneven effort. Columbia Tristar is
fined for the lackluster slate of extras and the lack of subtitles on this
Spanish/Canadian co-production.